Tag: self-worth

“Thanks for joining us today, Jane, was it?”
Jane sat across a small table from a reasonably-dressed hiring manager. She couldn’t help but notice that most of his attention was at the glass wall behind her.
“Yes. Here’s my resume, too.”
The well-dressed professional gave him one resume and placed another on the table in front of the empty seat to her right.
“Thanks. Well, George is running late again… so let’s jump right in.”

What is the goal to your career story? How “did” you get there, if you’re predicting your 10 to 40 year plan? When we start our careers, any opportunity will do, no matter if it’s night shift or underpaid. I don’t think it’s that we become less flexible. It’s that we’ve seen the bad gigs and know that investing our time and effort into “this job” will actually pull us backwards away from our career story’s goal.

My addictions strangle me when I’m unable to cope with situations. Hearing bad news kills. Chilling, defined here as succumbing to any addiction, then feels acceptable. If you’re anything like me, we need to re-enforce our defenses, rather than ask that the constant barrage of life’s perhaps-positives and perhaps-negatives cooperate with us. It would be nicer to have a conflict-free life. That won’t happen. Let’s instead try figuring out how to build up our defenses.

Today marks five years since I last drank. I’ve since been in many bars, been around many people drinking, but have had good enough friends to respect me, and steward me through. “If I saw you with a bottle in your hand, I’d knock it out and ask ‘what the hell are you doing?’[1]” My external resilience has enough fortitude to endure pretty much anything now. I think it’s the internal weakness that kills us.

I don’t meditate like most people. Traditional practice asks that you should empty your mind, clear your thoughts, and calmly sit. While I’ve had some success with this method for reaching thought equilibrium, I’ve had more success in float tanks (or when I have downtime) letting the errant thoughts freely roam, with the mostsuccess occurring after going in with challenging questions that need time to develop, like a photo of an unclaimed optimal future.

I used to profoundly respect anyone’s opinion. It’s not that I’m some kind of awful curmudgeon now. More that I refuse to freely accept anyone’s subjectivities about the world, or myself, until I’ve listened with my empathically critical ear to validate their true intentions. If the argument is reasonable enough, I’ll buy it. If not, I move on with my life. Why obsess over negative thoughts? Why not forget and carry on? That’s easy, right?

199 pages leaves no padding to hide behind. Eloquent sweet nothings are not present here. “Jocko” Willink doesn’t pull any punches with Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual. He is on a singular mission to teach us how to combat the lazy or unmotivated moments that unsuspectingly tempt us with “sugar-coated lies” found in fast food or unearned leisure. These are your enemy if you have any ambitions or if you want to keep what you’ve earned.

The 400th entry to Better Zombie had the wrong URL for over 12 hours… oops! That’s a trivial mistake. One problem I had growing up – maybe we all did – was the fight toward perfection through never acknowledging your mistakes. It’s always someone/something else’s fault I didn’t get that good grade. That irrational irresponsibility leads to subconscious suffering. Rather than admitting a problem to overcome it, if you avoid confronting the problem, you grow to fear it!

Health plays a key role in our self-confidence. If I’m feeling even somewhat ill, it’s likely I won’t feel confident in myself. That’s obvious, sure, it’s just I think we typically only etiologically work on problems ranging from communication to physical health. We might accidentally overmedicate to sedate lingering health issues or eat poorly, causing us physical distress, causing us mental distress, causing us to lose our self-confidence. What can we do to fix that?

While there’s something to be said for playing life safely, when the opportunity strikes, jump up on life’s stage! Get outside your comfort zone! Even for just a minute. The experience will probably be uncomfortable, you might need to push through fatigue, or embarrass yourself. You might step in spilled beer, get bumped into harmlessly, or get your picture taken. You also might not get the best shot. That’s still better than no shot whatsoever!